So to change the configuration of php you just need to change the PHPRC variable to point to a different directory containing your customized php.ini.. You could also create multiple shell wrapper scripts and create multiple Handler's+Actions in .htaccess..

How does Proxy Authentication work in Squid?

If Squid gets a request and the http_access rule list gets to a proxy_auth ACL, Squid looks for the Authorization header. If the header is present, Squid decodes it and extracts a username and password.

If the header is missing, Squid returns an HTTP reply with status 407 (Proxy Authentication Required). The user agent (browser) receives the 407 reply and then prompts the user to enter a name and password. The name and password are encoded, and sent in the Authorization header for subsequent requests to the proxy. Also see this example Authorization Header from .htaccess files.

NOTE: The name and password are encoded using “base64″ (See section 11.1 of RFC 2616). However, base64 is a binary-to-text encoding only, it does NOT encrypt the information it encodes. This means that the username and password are essentially “cleartext” between the browser and the proxy. Therefore, you probably should not use the same username and password that you would use for your account login.

Authentication is actually performed outside of main Squid process. When Squid starts, it spawns a number of authentication subprocesses. These processes read usernames and passwords on stdin, and reply with “OK” or “ERR” on stdout. This technique allows you to use a number of different authentication protocols (named “schemes” in this context). When multiple authentication schemes are offered by the server (Squid in this case), it is up to the User-Agent to choose one and authenticate using it. By RFC it should choose the safest one it can handle; in practice usually Microsoft Internet Explorer chooses the first one it’s been offered that it can handle, and Mozilla browsers are bug-compatible with the Microsoft system in this field.

The Squid source code comes with a few authentication backends (“helpers“) for Basic authentication. These include:

LDAP: Uses the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol

NCSA: Uses an NCSA-style username and password file.

MSNT: Uses a Windows NT authentication domain.

PAM: Uses the Unix Pluggable Authentication Modules scheme.

SMB: Uses a SMB server like Windows NT or Samba.

getpwam: Uses the old-fashioned Unix password file.

SASL: Uses SALS libraries.

mswin_sspi: Windows native authenticator

YP: Uses the NIS database

In addition Squid also supports the NTLM, Negotiate and Digest authentication schemes which provide more secure authentication methods, in that where the password is not exchanged in plain text over the wire. Each scheme have their own set of helpers and auth_param settings. Notice that helpers for different authentication schemes use different protocols to talk with squid, so they can’t be mixed.

In this example, users named lisa, sarah, joe, and frank are allowed to use the proxy at all times. Other users are allowed only during daytime hours.

How do I ask for authentication of an already authenticated user?

If a user is authenticated at the proxy you cannot “log out” and re-authenticate. The user usually has to close and re-open the browser windows to be able to re-login at the proxy. A simple configuration will probably look like this:

But there is a trick which can force the user to authenticate with a different account in certain situations. This happens if you deny access with an authentication related ACL last in the http_access deny statement. Example configuration:

In this case if the user requests http://www.google.com then first second http_access line matches and triggers re-authentication unless the user is one of the listed users. Remember: it’s always the last ACL on a http_access line that “matches”. If the matching ACL deals with authentication a re-authentication is triggered. If you didn’t want that you would need to switch the order of ACLs so that you get http_access deny !google_users google.

You might also run into an authentication loop if you are not careful. Assume that you use LDAP group lookups and want to deny access based on an LDAP group (e.g. only members of a certain LDAP group are allowed to reach certain web sites). In this case you may trigger re-authentication although you don’t intend to. This config is likely wrong for you:

The second http_access line would force the user to re-authenticate time and again if he/she is not member of the PROXY_ALLOWED group. This is perhaps not what you want. You rather wanted to deny access to non-members. So you need to rewrite this http_access line so that an ACL matches that has nothing to do with authentication. This is the correct example:

This way the http_access line still matches. But it’s the all ACL which is now last in the line. Since all is a static ACL (that always matches) and has nothing to do with authentication you will find that the access is just denied.

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This page gives some nice but advanced tricks for a moin Apache setup with php and .htaccess. The directives
on this page assume that you have knowledge about Apache configuration, newbies should
stick to the basic setup. This requires the Apache module “mod_rewrite” for rewriting (which should be standard).

mod_python is an Apache module that embeds the Python interpreter within the server. With mod_python you can write web-based applications in Python that will run many times faster than traditional CGI and will have access to advanced features such as ability to retain database connections and other data between hits and access to Apache internals.